Operational Services Report

January 2008

St. Mary's Relocation to Florence

The relocation of students and staff of St. Mary's Elementary to Florence Elementary will take place the first week of February. The "old wing" of Florence has been upgraded to accommodate the St. Mary's population. Florence Elementary looks very good and is now ready for the relocation thanks to the staff, students and parent community of Florence Elementary for their assistance in hosting those from St. Mary's. Principal David MacDonald and staff have been very hospitable throughout this entire process. Thanks also to Operations staff for all the great work at the Florence site in preparation for this move.

New Schools Status Report

A. North Sydney Elementary

Background

North Sydney Elementary is scheduled for opening in September 2009. This report is to provide an update on

activities which have been taken.

a. Site Selection

The school is to be constructed on the site of the current St. Mary's School in North Sydney, Additional properties have been acquired to accommodate the larger structure. The agreement to purchase the property from St. Joseph's parish requires and agreement to allow the tennis club to continue.

The size of the site and the continued presence of the tennis courts are presenting some challenges with traffic, play space, etc.

b. Design Development to Date

North Sydney Elementary is being designed for 280 students.

On December 5, 2007 the architect and NSDOE provided preliminary floor plans to the SST. These plans were embargoed pending production of the conceptual designs.

The conceptual drawings for the North Sydney Elementary were presented to the SST January 3, 2008.

On January 13, a meeting was held with the SST. In this meeting, the SST comments, as well as comments from board staff, were consolidated. A letter to NSDOE was forwarded January16 to submit the comments.

Future Work

Further work is being completed to provide more detail regarding Learning Support. This will be submitted as soon as complete. Additional work is also being completed to detail staffing for parking, staff room size, etc.

The next round of consultations is expected early in February. At this point the architect and DOE staff will deal with board staff on the details of each space. That is, they will meet with the Music teachers and Cathy MacNeil to discuss the layout of the Music room and with the Physical Education instructors and Mary Lou Andrea to discuss the gymnasium and so on for each space throughout the school.

B. Glace Bay Jr High

Background

Glace Bay Jr. High is scheduled for opening in September 2009. This report is to provide an update on activities which have taken place over the past number of months.

a. Site Selection

The final location for the school has yet to be announced. A report on site selection was presented to the board and the decision to add the KOC property on Wallace Road was approved by the board and submitted to NSDOE for their consideration

A drilling program is underway on the KOC site. Final site selection is expected upon completion of this geotechnical investigation.

b. Design Development to Date

Glace Bay Jr. High is being designed for student population of 650 students.

On December 5, 2007 the architect and NSDOE provided preliminary floor plans to the SST. These plans were embargoeppending production of the conceptual designs.

The conceptual drawings for Glace Bay Jr. High were presented to the SST January 2, 2008.

This concept plan was presented by the project architect and was representative of the Department of Education and representative of the Department of Transportation and Infrastructure Renewal. The conceptual plans include two potential sites.

On January 10, a second meeting was held with the SST. In this meeting their comments, along with comments from the board staff, were consolidated. A letter to NSDOE was forwarded January14 to submit the comments.

Future Work

Further work is being completed to provide more detail regarding Learning Support. This will be submitted as soon as complete. Additional work is also being completed to detail staffing for parking, staff room size, etc.

The next round of consultations is expected early in February. At this point the architect and DOE staff will deal with staff on the details of each space. That is, they will meet with the Music teachers and Cathy MacNeil to discuss the layout of the Music room and with the Physical Education instructors and Mary Lou Andrea to discuss the gymnasium and so on for each space throughout the school.

Transportation Report :

Report on Additional Training

September 7th , 2007: A half day session was held to review the trip inspections in detail. This included a review of the new Public Utility Board regulations and the inspector went over all sections of the new regulations and had a lengthy period of questions and answers following his presentation.

October 23rd , 2007: A half day session was conducted by the Public Utility Board Inspector and the School Board Safety and Training Officer to review the hours of work reporting procedure under the National Safety Code new regulations. This was more of a review and a discussion and some errors in completing the form that were found. A question and answer session followed.

November 23rd , 2007: Jack Ettinger, a motivational speaker, put on a half day session on how to deal with stress in the work place and how to understand the personalities of the people you work with and develop better communication skills to cope with everyday stress and actions of those around us.

PTM Routing Software and Map Info Mapping Software

During the month of November 2007 Colleen MacMullin, Coordinator of the Transportation Dept, and Kathy Donovan-MacKinnon, Technical Router of the Transportation Dept. , travelled to Charlottetown PEI for a meeting with Pupil Transportation Manager owners/operators. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss the current situation and future of PTM with the CBVRSB. During this meeting the benefits of PTM and MapInfo were discussed. The Transportation of the CBVRSB has benefited greatly since the purchase of the software in 2006. PTM and Mapinfo allow for the databasing and visual analyzing of bus runs for the department. The software programs make it possible to see run overlaps, duplication in stops for schools, regulation violations according to stops and so much more. The Transportation Dept. also uses the software to map student civic locations according to school and map student populations according to board. This mapping allows for analyzing based on walking distances and school catchment areas and helps in new construction location decisions or relocation of students to schools. PTM & MapInfo Software have allowed the CBVRSB Transportation Dept to efficiently and cost effectively run their department by removing unnecessary bus runs and streamlining existing bus runs. These software programs were essential tools when a "Walking Policy Committee" was formed by the Provincial Government under the direction of Chester Sabean. Kathy Donovan-MacKinnon was a member of this provincial committee and used the information input and generated into both programs to help in the decision making processes of the committee and eventual determination of a provincial walking policy within the province of Nova Scotia. The transfer of students from St. Mary's to Florence has been arranged by using busses in the area with the addition of one bus to make the bus runs efficient. All students have been given a copy of their new bus run indicating their stop in the A.M. and P.M. On January 18th , 2007 transportation employees did a morning session at St. Mary's school with Buster the Safety bus delivering our School Bus Safety Program to all students. We expect a smooth transition.